N&O, First Presbyterian broken into; vandalized

An unknown person broke into both First Presbyterian Church and The News & Observer early Sunday morning, leaving bloody trails at the closely neighboring downtown fixtures.

Several computers were thrown through the N&O’s third-floor windows onto the McDowell Street lawn downtown. Files were opened in several administrative offices and tossed outside with the electronics.

“The suspect is on video,” said Publisher Orage Quarles III. “Luckily, there weren't any damage to any humans. That's the best thing. He left a mess and we'll probably increase our security.”

Journalists at the N&O discovered the damage at about 1:30 a.m., Quarles said. Desks were overturned and windows were broken in the room in which editors meet to discuss which stories will run in the daily paper and where they will appear. Several bloody smears appeared throughout the newsroom and also on doorknobs, at least one of which appeared to have been hit with a fire extinguisher.

Reports of a break-in came from First Presbyterian Church on Salisbury Street at 8 a.m. Sunday. The church, founded in 1816, had similar broken windows and blood traces left behind, police said. Detectives were considering the possibility that the two crimes, which happened one block apart, were related.

Calls to the church were not immediately returned Sunday.

Quarles and other N&O staff spent the early hours of Sunday cleaning paperwork off the N&O front lawn. The publisher said that the debris filled a cart. He said it was not apparent that anything in particular had been targeted.

“As drunk as that guy was,” Quarles said, “I couldn’t tell what he was after. I don’t want to guess. I just went down and cleaned up.”

Quarles said The News & Observer had no security guards on duty Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Typically, News & Observer employees are in the building around the clock.

The newspaper has had past break-ins with 24-hour security, Quarles said. Sunday morning’s incident likely resulted more from the building’s age than from lack of security.

Police were continuing their investigation in evening hours Sunday.

This story was originally published October 4, 2015 at 12:31 PM with the headline "N&O, First Presbyterian broken into; vandalized."